The Daily Signal - Hungary and a ‘Last Warning to the West’

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

For years, especially during the Cold War, Hungary looked to America as an example of freedom, but now it might be time for the U.S. to take notes from Hungary, according to Shea Bradley-Farrell.  Bradley-Farrell, president of the Counterpoint Institute for Policy, Research and Education, recently spent several months in Hungary doing research for her new book. While in the European nation formerly controlled by the then-Soviet Union, Bradley-Farrell says she found herself often having a similar conversation with Hungarians.  “Hungarians told me over and over, ‘the rhetoric coming out of the United States reminds us of our Soviet era,’” Bradley-Farrell recalled. “And the more I dug into that, the more that I realized that the things that we’re dealing with here and the so-called progressive agenda, the woke agenda, the Biden administration, they’re directly out of the playbook of communism,” she says.  In her new book, “Last Warning to the West: Hungary’s Triumph Over Communism and the Woke Agenda,” Bradley-Farrell explains a roadmap for how America can correct course and learn from our friends in Hungary at this moment in history.  Bradley-Farrell joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss the book and share the stories of conversation she had in Hungary.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, January 15th. I'm Virginia Allen. For years, the nation of Hungary looked to America as an example of freedom. But now it might be time for the U.S. to take some notes from Hungary, according to author, Shea Bradley Farrell. Bradley Farrell is the president of Counterpoint Institute, and she recently spent several months in Hungary doing research for her new book. And while in the nation that was formerly controlled by the Soviet, Union, she says that she had the same conversation multiple times with many Hungarians. And it went something like this. They would tell her that the rhetoric coming out of the United States reminded them of their Soviet air in Hungary. Well, as a result of those conversations and as she did more research, we now have the book, Last Warning to the West, Hungary's triumph over communism and the woke agenda. Dr. Shea Bradley Farrell joins the show today to discuss her new book

and to share stories about what she learned about maybe some of the things that America can take from Hungary. Stay tuned for our conversation after this. Looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues from America's outpost here in Washington, sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. You'll get top conservative research, a rundown of important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online and hot takes from our experts.

Sign up at heritage.org slash agenda or at the link in the show notes. It is my pleasure today to have with us in studio, Dr. Shea Bradley Farrell. Dr. Shea is the president of Counterpoint Institute and the author of the brand new book, Last Warning to the West Hungary's Triumph over Communism and the Woke Agenda. Dr. Shea, thanks for being with us. So glad to be here, Virginia. Thank you for having me in your beautiful studio. Well, I think this is such a relevant conversation to be having right now at this point in history, at this moment.

If you would talk a little bit about your background and the work also that you do at Counterpoint Institute. And what got you into researching Hungary? Well, you know, I came to D.C. seven and a half years ago. I didn't know a soul. And I was working in international development, which means I went around the world helping underdeveloped countries really, develop economically. That was my focus.

And on women, women's businesses. But when I got to D.C., what really struck me is that I felt like we were losing our freedoms. The Democrats in Congress, people on the liberal leftist side of the aisle with organizations, were very hard, hardly. Is that a word? No, I don't think so. But they were really, are really trying to take away our freedoms and transform America into something that I have never seen before. So I had the privilege after that of volunteering for Concerned Women for America because Trump had just come into the office and said, come into office and said that he needed somebody at the international table. They brought me in. I started working for them. I built

It's an international affairs department there, became vice president of it, and had the privilege of working alongside the Trump administration, Mike Pompeo, Ivanka Trump, on many different issues around the world. So that's how it started. I always say if they did not make me mad, the liberal left about taking away my freedoms, I would never be a conservative leader today. Wow. And Counterpoint, if you would share with us, what is the mission of Counterpoint Institute? Well, we are foreign policy, national security organization, and I always say our mission is to educate Americans and drive policy change here on Capitol Hill. And, you know, we're a think tank, but we're also an activist organization. We don't just sit around writing great policy papers, which we do that.

But I have spent weeks at the U.S. southern border interviewing ranchers, law enforcement down there. In fact, I have a five-part daily signal series that I wrote on one of my trips down there a couple of years ago on Biden's disaster. You know, I've been in the Ukrainian Refugee Center in Hungary. So we go to find out what's really happening to bring the story back to Americans because it affects our foreign policy. It affects where our money is being spent around the world. And what I've discovered is a lot of Americans don't know what our foreign policy is. They don't know where our foreign aid is being spent, such as I found out last week on transgender ballroom dancing in Peru is another story for another time. Okay, yeah.

But I bring these stories back to America. Well, and one of the stories that you have brought back to America, you have put into your brand new book last morning to the West. That's right. And you spent a number of months in Hungary really looking at how things have unfolded in Hungary over the years, the history. of Hungary, drawn comparisons between it and America. In the book, you really uphold Hungary as a model that America should look to. So in order, though, to discuss what America needs to draw from Hungary, let's go back and talk about the history. What was happening in Hungary in the 1940s, 1950s, what were the challenges they were facing? And how was Marxism trying to influence Hungary

at the time? Well, in 1944, they were occupied by Hitler, by Nazi Germany. If you look at my book, you'll find out of all kinds of atrocities that was going on in Hungary because of the Nazi occupation. In 1945, the Soviet Union came in, sieged Budapest, knocked the Nazis out, and took over Hungary for 46 years. And there's this place in Hungary called the House. of terror. And strangely enough, it was the headquarters of both the Nazis, the Erochros party, when they were in Hungary, when they were occupying. But it also became the headquarters of the Soviet police. And you can go down to the dungeon in the bottom of the building and see the stains down there, see and hear the stories of how people were tortured by both

parties for their beliefs, their religious, or their political beliefs mainly, but anything that wasn't allegiant to either system of thought, whether it was fascism or communism, whichever political party, was not allowed. That's the point. There was no freedom. And after hearing these stories, I spent a lot of time at the House of Terror. for the book, I actually interviewed probably about 60 people for the book, young people, older people, two gentlemen who were actually alive during the time that the Russians came in and

sieged Budapest. And, you know, I talked to them separately. And what they both remembered that stuck out that they told me is that the Soviet soldiers were raping women in the basements where they were hiding. So this was used as a method of war. And then they went on, of course, to completely try to destroy the city. But anyway, to get back to my story, I also got to interview senior officials of government there. And I learned a lot to put into the book. When I first went, the book was, the book was going to be about national sovereignty because Hungary is fighting this woke agenda in the EU? And I was like, well, how are they doing it? How are they succeeding? But the thing that kept really striking me was that Hungarians told me over and over, the rhetoric coming out of the

United States reminds us of our Soviet era. Wow. And the more I dug into that, the more that I realized that the things that we're dealing with here in the so-called progressive agenda, the woke agenda, the Biden administration. They're directly out of the playbook of communism. I have 11 points in the book that were actually published by our Department of Defense in 1959 by international security expert Stephen Posone. These points of communist psychological warfare is what they are, were to teach Americans how to combat communism and how to understand that communism was trying to screw with our minds. All 11 of those points, if you look at them,

apply to what's going on here today in the United States. One of them, for example, is to use a crisis to grab power or to take control. We saw that happen with COVID, not just here in America, but all over the world. Governments were trying to control people pushing them to do vaccine mandates here we had. We had, you know, all around the world.

We had mandatory lockdowns, kind of, even in Australia, in a very strange lockdown camps that were pretty eerie. But anyway, I could tell you some more of those points. The point is, as Hungarians were correct, and they are very concerned with America, and they used to look at us as a light on a shining hill. when they were under occupation of Soviet Union until 1991. And they told me over and over, we look to the U.S. for an example of freedom, prosperity. They love Reagan. They have a great statue of Reagan there in Budapest.

But now we're concerned. We're worried about America. What happened in Hungary after 1991, when they came out. from underneath the Soviet Union, what transpired, and how have they really established themselves as these lovers of freedom? Well, they've always been, you know, Virginia, they have been a Christian nation for 1100 years. And their constitution protects family. It protects religious freedom. It protects children. This is what their society is based on. So when they got out of communism, they at first elected some people who were really, in truth, reinvented communist. All of a sudden, after

communist, after the Soviet Union was pushed out, the people, and the names are escaping me at the moment, they're in the book, they all of a sudden, instead of having been these people who were tied to communists or the communist government, all of a sudden they reinvented themselves as freedom fighters. Well, a lot of this was not true. Who really was a freedom fighter was Prime Minister Victor Orban, who is the prime minister today. I've had the privilege of sitting down with him a couple of times

and discussing politics with him. He's really a very gracious man. Anyway, so he finally got elected. There were some other turbulent times there because what had happened is the communists had plunged Hungary deeper and deeper into debt. Well, finally, they got Prime Minister Viktor Orban in, and this time in 2022, he won a landslide victory. It was his fourth consecutive win to be prime minister. And he has really turned the country around.

He's put in family policies that have helped to raise the fertility. rate there in Hungary. It's simply giving tax cuts to families who have more children so that people feel supported in order to get married. Actually, you know, marriage rates have increased. Divorce rates are down. Abortion has been halved. Abortion rates. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, no, I'm just fascinated. And you're laying it out right now to think about what are the differences. You know, In America, in Europe, there's so many conversations swirling around transgenderism, around abortion, around, especially here in America, illegal immigration,

the crisis at our border, we're dealing with all these things. There's heated opinions, obvious agendas being pushed. Are they having similar conversations in Hungary about issues like that? Yeah, in fact, Hungary does referendums on these things that the EU tries to push on them, that the majority of people don't want transgender under-curriculum in their schools, for example.

Legal immigration, the Ukraine war, the sanctions. They didn't want to support the sanctions simply because it would crush their economy because they're reliant on Russian oil. I mean, think about it. Their infrastructure is Soviet era. But on all three of these issues, they've taken public referendums to see what the public wanted. And all of them are around 78.

to 98 percent, no, we don't want this. So, for example, a couple years ago, the EU wanted them to adopt this transgender curriculum into their schools. They said, no, they took a referendum, and the parents were no. We decide what we teach our children. And, you know, I've spent months in Hungary.

I've seen gay people. Nobody cares. But they don't want this ideology of transitioning being taught to their children in schools or through the media, they believe it's, go figure, they believe it's the parents' right to teach this or not teach this. But the EU has become very angry about it. It's the reason that our ambassador over there,

David Pressman, has called them authoritarian, backsliding from democracy. He said these things in his confirmation hearing, and he spends a lot of time on social media comparing Orban with Putin saying he's a Russia lover. I mean, they were occupied, but the Soviet Union for 46 years with a lot of sorrow, a lot of death, and a lot of pain. I don't think, you know, I laugh when I hear people say that he's a Putin lover.

I don't think so. But same thing with immigration. Our ambassador, our administration is very angry towards the Orban administration. on all these issues. They don't want to support the sanctions for the war. They don't want more war. And Virginia, here's the thing. Like I think I mentioned to you,

I've been in the Ukrainian Refugee Center in Hungary. They have taken in three and a half million refugees that were coming through Hungary. Now, a lot of them wanted to just keep going, and guess what Hungary did? I saw them. They gave them bus tickets. They gave them plane tickets.

They gave them train tickets to help them go where they wanted. The ones that wanted jobs to stay in Hungary, they helped relocate them. You know, so they care about the people. And here's the point about that is over 400,000 Ukrainians have died. And this is something I'm telling you that Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.

So I'm just trying to explain their heart. They see the devastation of Ukraine. Just like my husband and I, if you're over there and see the real news, you see the devastation. So it's not, It's not so cut and dry as people want you to believe over here in the United States. Yeah.

You know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about, okay, where did the U.S. drop the ball? Because, you know, so much just tension and wars, America has experienced many of the same things in some ways that Europe has, as far as, you know, just kind of being arm and arm in many fights over the years. and we've made choices, obviously, that are different than Hungary's. And I'm thinking specifically about American institutions and especially education. And I think so much of the Marxist ideology has kind of been funneled into America through our higher ed. How have they handled that in Hungary? Are the universities as far left as we have here in America?

And if not, how have they kept that from happening? I think that's a great question. And I think you hit the nail on the head about how this Marxism has taken such strong hold in the United States. Through academia has been a huge part of it. Well, first of all, Hungary came out of the destruction of Marxism in only 1991. Most of the people there still remember what it's like not to live free. Sure. And so they set about setting policies that would keep this from happening again. They embraced capitalism. They reduced the debt. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of his main points when he first came into office decades ago was to reduce the national debt and spur the economy on.

The other thing, and I was going to tell you, it was just going, right on oh it's one of his 12 points actually which i put in my book uh urbine has 12 points of how to have a uh constitutionally based conservative conservative traditional country they're very simple and one of the things that he says is support institutions that are believing these things start your own your own institution like that's why i started counterpoint institute for that very thing And they have put money in organizations, think tanks that are conservative. They've put money in universities. They've put money in media.

What people don't understand is that there are also leftist organizations. I mean, media in Hungary is about half conservative, half media, excuse me, half leftists. But what people don't understand is that it's private. It's private media. just more people have come up and said, you know what, we want to support conservative principles. So we're going to create these institutions. We're going to support them with our money so that these ideas are also being taught along with the leftist ideas. Let's talk about just some of those key things that America can take away from Hungary.

Because I love that this is a book of hope. it's a last warning, it's a final warning, but we're not at the end. No. You've said we have time. Of course. And I think we also obviously want to acknowledge the differences between Hungary and America. And, you know, many people will say, well, Hungary is a nation of about 10 million. America.

It's a nation of about 335 million. Hungary is landlocked. Obviously, the U.S. isn't. Even with those differences, what is your argument for these are the things that America can do right now? that we can pull from Hungary in order to write this ship. Yeah. Well, first of all, let me say this. A lot of articles are written about, oh, U.S. conservatives think that Hungary is the model for the U.S.

No, I don't think that. I think we're the model. Our constitution, our founding is the model for the world, but we have lost our way. And my point in writing the book is that our Hungarian friends, the people that care about us are saying, hey, your rhetoric is communist. You guys need to wake up because you're about to lose what we loved about you and what made us friends. So it's really more of a wake up call. It's also a common sense call because I want people, first of all, to look at the communist principles. And another one of those 11 communist psychological warfare principles is that the communists build a propaganda body that pushes out their one truth, their propaganda, their deception narrative.

I mean, right now we have the Biden administration basically, in my opinion, controlling the mainstream media. It certainly has collaborated with social media to oppress election so-called deniers to oppress people who had differing opinions on COVID. So I want people to be aware because we don't remember what it's like not to be free. We've been free the whole time we've been here since, you know, our revolutionary war, right? And Hungarians just got free in 1991, and they've been fighting for their sovereignty off and on for 1100 years. So their sovereignty, their freedom is very dear to them. And in our society, I believe we're forgetting that. So going to, I think the last chapter is Orban's 12 points, they're common sense.

They're just things that some of us are doing, but more of us need to do. You know, like one of them very simply, Virginia, is play by your own rules. That just means stick to your guns on what you believe. Promote it like you're doing right here today. More and more people need to do that. Another one is very simple. You know, stay unified. I believe in the Republican Party half the time.

We are fighting with each other. We're calling, you know, the establishment is trying to oppress conservatives. there's all this elbow throwing going on where if we could just pull together our ideas, be unified, pulled together our resources, we could win this. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's such an encouraging note to end on who we can win this. Well, I want to encourage everyone pick up a copy of the book, last warning to the West. Dr. Shea, thank you for your time today.

Thank you for your insight. I feel like we could have about a two-hour conversation just diving deep into this. I want to encourage all of our listeners check out your work, make sure that they're following you across social media platforms. Tell us how we can keep up with what you're doing. Oh, I appreciate that. Go to counterpoint institute.org. Sign up for our newsletter to see what we're doing. It only comes out a couple times a month.

I'm on Twitter and on Instagram as at Dr. Shea underscore DC and it's S-H-E-A. And then Counterpoint Institute is at Counterpoint D-C on X and at Counterpoint Institute on Instagram. So thank you. I really appreciate that. Great. Thank you, Dr. Shea. Well, with that, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for joining us today on Martin Luther King Day.

If you have the day off, we hope you're enjoying it, maybe taking a little bit of time to sit and remember the legacy of Martin Luther King. If we have just spent time today talking about the importance of freedom here in America. But we really appreciate you joining us for this conversation with Dr. Shea. Again, be sure to pick up a copy of her book, Last Warning to the West, Hungary's triumph over communism and The Woke Agenda. Today, January 15th, we do not have a top news edition this afternoon. We hope that you're enjoying again at time with friends and family on Martin Luther King Day. We will be back with Top News tomorrow, and we, of course, will be back with our interview edition tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, take a minute to subscribe to the Daily Settle podcast wherever you like to listen. Thanks again. Have a great rest of your day. you back here tomorrow morning. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheris.

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